‘If in the first year they are together, a couple put a bean in a pot every time they make love, afterwards they will need a whole lifetime of marriage to empty the pot again if each time they make love after that first year they take a bean out of the pot,’ goes a wise old Asian saying. The question of how often sexual intercourse should take place has preoccupied not only us, but also the founders of religions, philosophers and legislators.
In the Qu’ran the prophet Muhammad, who in comparison with other founders of religions shows a great deal of consideration for women, prescribes once a week. That is the woman’s right, regardless of the number of wives the man has. The Jewish Talmud is less general, and distinguishes between different classes of people. The vigorous young man who is not forced to work hard is recommended to make love once a day, the ordinary workman twice a week, and scholars once a week. Professors may be given a dispensation, requiring them to have intercourse only once every two years. Martin Luther regarded twice a week as the correct quota, while the pope advises ejaculation only if there is a desire for children.
Legislators also concern themselves indirectly with frequency of intercourse. In many Western countries neither a women nor a man may be forced to have sexual intercourse within marriage. Married rape is illegal. Recent Dutch research showed that 96 per cent of couples still have intercourse once or more every two months. A problem is now arising with an increasingly frequent phenomenon, the ‘double-income-no-sex syndrome’. Many couples are so wrapped up in their careers that have scarcely any time for intimacy. They regard sex as a chore to be carried out, like emptying the dishwasher.
Dr Alfred Kinsey wrote long ago that the age of the man is the most decisive factor. Kinsey was a complete number freak, and the following figures are taken from his statistics on average weekly frequency of coitus:
between 26 and between 31 and between 41 and between 46 and between 51 and between 56 and between 61 and between 66 and between 71 and
Kinsey’s figures are pretty accurate, don’t you think? Surely every reader will tend to have a quick look at his or her own age bracket, or his or her partner’s.
Older men can sometimes be helped with the following rules of thumb for frequency of intercourse in relation to age:
Twice daily
Tri-weekly
Try-weekly
Try-weakly
Try, try, try
Try anything (golf?)
Try to remember
Many men come quickly, in their own eyes much too quickly. The modern jargon term is premature ejaculation (pe). This means that within a few seconds, or at most a minute after inserting the penis into the vagina (or another orifice) there is an ejaculation. The ejaculation may also take place during foreplay, even before insertion. Sexologists speak in such a case of ejaculatio ante portas. When this happens it often provokes a strong feeling of dissatisfaction and irritation, especially in one’s partner.
Research in the 1940s by Kinsey and his associates showed that between 25 and 75 per cent of all adult males in the United States had an ejaculation within two minutes of penetration. That research was far less reliable than the recent multinational research led by Dutch neurosexologist Mark Waldinger. He is regarded as the ‘inventor’ of the use of the stopwatch in research into pe. The man is asked to press the button on a stopwatch at the moment of penetration so that the time it takes to reach ejaculation can be calculated exactly. In the jargon researchers speak of the Intravaginal Ejaculation Latency Time or ielt. Waldinger and his team asked 491 men, with no ailments, from Norway, Spain, Turkey, the United States and the Netherlands to participate in the stopwatch research. The average ielt turned out to be 5 minutes 40 seconds, with extremes varying in either direction from a few seconds to almost three-quarters of an hour. On the basis of the distribution curves the researchers felt able to assert that men who always climax within a minute can be regarded as ‘patients’, at least if they are troubled by the condition.
In any case pe is the most frequent sexual ailment in many countries. However, men seek help with it less frequently than with erectile dysfunction. Not every man sees it as a problem: for some it is a part of themselves, but with others the repeated fear of failure has a
disastrous effect. People devise all kinds of tricks, varying from consuming large amounts of alcohol beforehand to thinking of rotten eggs, a herd of plodding elephants, barbed wire or blue envelopes. Another ruse is to masturbate before intercourse and hope that the second ejaculation will take slightly longer. For this purpose the man sometimes comes up with the excuse of wanting to shower before making love. Of course this makes a difference, but the disadvantage is that afterwards the arousal level may have decreased considerably. In addition, for an older man at least it takes longer to achieve a second ejaculation. None of this need be catastrophic provided the man in question ensures that his bed partner derives sufficient pleasure.
We know little about the psychological and physiological processes which cause a man to reach orgasm too quickly, though many presuppositions have been put forward. One of the first explanations was a psychoanalytical one, namely a latent hatred of women. Later psychologists decided that someone’s first experiences of coitus in hasty or tense circumstances were at the root of the ‘problem’. Equally, there is lack of adequate biological explanations. It is true that, for example, some rats are also ‘quick off the mark’. Very probably pe is more a freak of nature. There is quite simply a gradual transition from men who come to orgasm very quickly and those who take a long time. The majority of men with pe are mentally, physically and sexually healthy and have a happy relationship with their partner. Most have no need for psychotherapy. Psychological treatment is required only if men cannot handle their pe, if the ailment has become an obsession or if their relationship with their partner has come under great pressure.
PE-sufferers can often be helped with medication, in the form of a tablet or a desensitizing cream or spray. Since the 1940s attempts have been made to make the glans and the penis less sensitive. Nowadays we use emla cream, usually applied to children’s skins to anaesthetize them before a blood sample is taken. emla contains lidocaine and prilocaine, two anaesthetics. The cream must be applied at least ten minutes before intercourse, and must be wiped off in good time to prevent the partner from also becoming genitally anaesthetized. A condom can of course also be used. One annoying side-effect of the cream is that when urinating after intercourse the man may be troubled by a burning sensation at the end of the urethra. In addition the cream may cause skin rashes on the penis and the glans. Sex shops also sell anaesthetic sprays; years ago women carried similar-sized spray cans of ‘intimate deodorant’, which women’s magazines had convinced them they needed.
It was not until the early 1970s that a medication appeared on the market that could delay ejaculation and had few side-effects. Its trade name was Anafranil and its chemical name clomipramine. Although it was easily available on prescription, little use was made of it in sexology. Only in the 1990s did treatment with pills attract widespread interest. Up to then many sexologists felt that this was simply a ‘symptom — suppressant’ medication, and that underlying mental problems had to be dealt with. The only snag was that in most cases there was no underlying psychological problem.
At the end of the 1980s selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors (ssris) came on the market for the treatment of depression, the best — known examples being Prozac and Seroxat. In some men and women treated with certain ssris it was found that ejaculation or orgasm was delayed, and a number sometimes did not climax at all. In any case effect and side-effect are only words, interpretations of the result of medication. What is desirable for one person may be called a major effect. What is not desirable is quickly dismissed as a side-effect. This is what happened with ssris, although they are not officially indicated for pe. These types of medication should therefore be used under the supervision of a doctor.